Best of 2011: Atheists against the New Atheism

In Western countries, there is a long tradition of intellectual critique of religious teachings - going far back into antiquity. This tradition has sometimes thrived, though sometimes it has been suppressed. In any event, twentieth-century Westerners did not lack access to material that disputed the existence of deities and challenged popular religious doctrines.

Consider the 1980s and 1990s, however - the rather recent past. Critiques of religious teachings were available but not especially fashionable and not highly visible.

Mostly, they were tucked away in academic books and journals, in material published by what we can think of broadly as the rationalist movement, or in monographs from relatively small publishers such as Prometheus Books.

This has now changed, and you can pinpoint the exact year when it happened: 2004. That was the year when large trade imprints in English-speaking countries began publishing forthright, unashamed attacks on the truth of religious doctrines and the moral pretensions of churches and sects. Since then, some of the most prominent books, such as The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, have sold millions of copies.

In November 2006, journalist Gary Wolf published a piece in Wired magazine under the title "The Church of the Non-Believers." He dubbed Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett "the New Atheists" and hyped up their hostility to religion, as opposed to mere disagreement with religious doctrines.

The New Atheism thus acquired its label, though the main thing that had changed was the reading public's hunger for such material.

That hunger continues, and with it there is a vibe of people organising under the banner of atheism. For whatever reasons, large numbers of us seem to be fed up with religion, and we're not afraid to say so.

Partly, of course, this was a reaction to the events of 11 September 2001, and it's notable that The End of Faith by Sam Harris - the first of the very popular New Atheist books - was largely focused on Islam. But surely that's not the whole story.

Every day, we see evidence that even traditional forms of Christianity, which pride themselves on their love and compassion, have a dark side. In many cases, we see Christians, doubtless well-intentioned, wanting to get governments to impose their canons of conduct, often barbaric or puritanical, on others who may not be Christians.

This has created a backlash. Inevitably, many people are now asking whether religious leaders and organisations really have the authority that they claim, whether their God even exists, whether their holy texts are more than human constructions, and whether their doctrines are credible.

Hence we have the New Atheism, which is basically the Old Atheism with a larger audience, an audience that looks for critiques of religion from many viewpoints - philosophical, scientific, moral, historical, and so on.

Perhaps inevitably, this has produced its own backlash. Critics of religion have themselves been put under the microscope, and many counter-critiques have been produced. Religious opponents of the New Atheists brand them as unsophisticated, unreasonable, extreme, or strident.

This sometimes makes me wonder whether we're talking about the same people - I don't, for example, recognise the mild-mannered and often self-critical Richard Dawkins in these descriptions.

Be that as it may, there is a far more surprising phenomenon, that of atheist thinkers who have joined the backlash against the New Atheism, and often employing far nastier tones than anything in the New Atheist writings themselves.

I'm not talking about disagreement with specific New Atheist thinkers about specific points - such as my own disagreement with Sam Harris about certain issues in moral theory. I'm referring to a continual spectacle of sledging on the Internet by, among others, philosopher Michael Ruse (though he is not necessarily the worst offender).

An uncharitable explanation of this would refer to the emotions of envy, jealousy and spite. A more charitable explanation would suggest that it is merely disappointment that the New Atheists are "doin it rong" - that the "wrong" arguments are gaining popularity.

Well, fine. But there is now a greater opportunity than ever to disseminate the "correct" historical and philosophical analyses of religion, whatever they are. Why not take advantage of it?

When I recently raised these points on my blog, Ruse responded in a piece in which he didn't mention me by name but merely labelled me "a Junior New Atheist from Australia." Whatever I should make of that - and I don't think it's equivalent to my own reticence about naming names when making a general point - Ruse's stated reasons included a dislike of "wrong or simplistic or misleading" ideas getting "great traction with the public."

He complains that Dawkins is "simplistic" in analysing arguments for the existence of God, that Dennett is "naive and simplistic" in analysing the attractions and growth of religion, and that Harris is "crude beyond belief" in his science-based approach to morality.

As for Christopher Hitchens, a slightly newer New Atheist, Ruse says that he doesn't read Hitchens because of his support for the war in Iraq.

But isn't this rather strange? I'll set aside Ruse's apparent practice of not reading an author, such as Hitchens, on issues A, B and C if he disagrees with him on issue D. So be it. However, if Ruse has disagreements with specific thinkers about specific points, nothing stops him entering into civil dialogue or debate about those points.

Sam Harris and I have engaged in such dialogue on this very site, without name calling or bitterness - and as it happens, my views about moral theory are probably closer to those of Ruse than to those of Harris. So where's the problem?

In the end, Ruse brings up his oft-stated view that a future radical-conservative United States Supreme Court could turn against the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He evidently thinks that the prevalence of atheistic or anti-religious arguments based on evolution could lead the court to view evolutionary theory itself as an anti-religious philosophy, in which case it could not be taught as fact in public schools.

It would have to be kept out of science classes, or creation science would have to be offered as an alternative. Or something like that. Ruse does not spell out his thesis in the form of a remotely reputable legal argument, but simply talks vaguely about "meshing" evolution and atheism (or science and religion, or science and atheism).

All this, however, is, to borrow Ruse's terminology, simplistic, misleading, and just plain wrong. Even Ruse concedes that it might not pass muster with a First Amendment scholar, and no wonder.

As a philosopher of science, Ruse gave evidence in one court case (McLean v. Arkansas, 1982) where creation science was kept out of public schools. That does not mean that he's an expert on American constitutional law and theory or that he has a good understanding of the overall religion/science case law. I would certainly not go to him for legal advice on these matters.

For Ruse, the whole point seems to be that a bright line must be drawn between religion and science, but this is not merely simplistic, misleading and wrong - though it is all of those. It is impossible.

Whatever we find out about the universe we live in, whether through science as narrowly-understood, through work in the humanities (such as archaeology and historical-textual scholarship), or other means, is potentially grist to the mill of theologians and philosophers.

If physicists find that the fundamental constants are just right for the emergence of complex chemistry, and hence of life, certain philosophers and theologians will claim that this is evidence for the existence of God.

If physicists then find that the alleged "fine-tuning" of the constants does not exist, or that it can be explained in some independently attractive way, that will then undermine one argument for God's existence.

If geologists find - as they certainly have - that our planet is four to five billion years old, that renders highly implausible a particular theological approach which, based on a literalist approach to the Bible, claims it was created by God about 6,000 years ago. Less literalist theologies thereby benefit.

If archaeologists and historians ever find good evidence for the Egyptian captivity, the decades that the Jews supposedly spent wandering in the wilderness, and the conquest of the promised land, all as described early in the Hebrew Bible, that will provide ammunition to theologians who take the relevant biblical accounts literally. If they don't, it helps less literalist theologians and may also help some atheist arguments.

The theory of evolution provides an explanation for the intricately functional diversity of life on Earth. Accordingly, it undermines certain arguments for the existence of God based on that diversity - there is no reason to posit a supernatural designer of life forms.

Other theistic arguments will be undermined when and if we get a truly robust scientific theory as to how life arose from non-life in the first place.

Meanwhile, some theologians claim that the theory of evolution helps them get God off the hook for certain of the world's evils: the latter are explained as the product of an unfolding process, rather than being specifically devised by God.

Some other theologians, however, along with many atheistic philosophers, think that evolution makes the Problem of Evil worse. It certainly undermines any straightforward explanation that suffering was brought into the world when Adam and Eve freely sinned at a specific time in history.

The continual adjustment of certain theological systems to conform to scientific findings may itself lead to theological inferences (such as the inference that the Bible was never intended as a quasi-scientific guide). It may also help some atheistic arguments.

I could go on with examples. Ruse may, of course, think that all of these empirically-based theological and philosophical arguments are bad ones. He may even dismiss them all out of hand - though that would be simplistic to say the least.

But what he can't do is legislate this kind of discourse out of existence. Neither can the courts. It is pretty much inevitable that theologians and philosophers will draw conclusions based on empirical facts obtained by scientists and others.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion demand that this be allowed to happen without interference from the state.

While the American courts cannot stop this, they can certainly stop public schools teaching the relevant theological and philosophical doctrines directly and as matters of fact. The courts can insist that public schools simply teach the science (or history, or whatever the subject may be), and allow its theological or anti-theological implications, if any, to be debated elsewhere.

They can, furthermore, ensure that public schools do not blatantly fudge their science curricula so as to lend support to one theological or anti-theological viewpoint rather than another. Thus, a school system can be prevented from teaching that students should doubt the essentials of Darwinian evolution, in particular, when this is actually as robust a body of theory as almost any in modern science.

The point of the First Amendment is not to prevent the state and its agencies from saying anything that might be seized upon to support a theological position or an anti-religious one. It is to ensure that the state acts for secular reasons, not, for example, out of religious favour or with a persecutory intent.

When it comes to science education, public school systems in the United States and other liberal democracies generally have the secular goal of teaching students well-established findings, those that are generally accepted by working scientists.

In other words, students are provided with secular knowledge. The theological and philosophical chips can then fall where they may - outside of class.

The above analysis is itself too simple, no doubt, but I submit that it provides a more accurate picture of the American case law, taken as a whole, and of the constitutional theory that underlies it, than anything offered by Ruse.

The direction of the cases shows that the American courts are not interested in preventing the dissemination by the state of well-established secular knowledge. They are, on the other hand, unimpressed by a state's efforts to fudge what is taught: to undermine good science so as to give comfort to a theological position such as biblical literalism.

Of course, the courts just might change tack in the direction feared by Ruse. You never know. But the current legal position is well-entrenched in precedent. Ruse's fear of a U-turn is a product of his imagination, not of sound legal reasoning.

Yet, he expresses "contempt" for anyone who cannot persuade him to drop his crude analysis. For somebody who supposedly dislikes simplistic ideas, this is an extraordinary attitude to take.

Again, I question why the New Atheists cop so much flak - expressed in such emotive terms, with words such as "contempt" bandied about freely - from some of their natural allies.

In responding to this "Junior New Atheist from Australia," Professor Ruse has offered no good explanation for his own bitterness.

I'm sorry to say it, but this is not a good look.

Russell Blackford is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolution and Technology, and conjoint lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. He co-edited, with Udo Schuklenk, 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). His next book, with the working-title "Freedom of Religion and the Secular State," will be published later this year.

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